Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday February 04, 2016 @10:04AM
from the don't-worry-they'll-understand-the-delay dept.

Mr.Intel writes: The IRS stopped accepting electronically filed tax returns Wednesday because of problems with some of its computer systems. The outage could affect refunds, but the agency said it doesn't anticipate "major disruptions." A "hardware failure" forced the shutdown of several tax processing systems, including the e-file system, the IRS said in a statement. The IRS.gov website remains available, but "where's my refund" and other services are not working. Some systems will be out of service at least until Thursday, the agency said. "The IRS is currently in the process of making repairs and working to restore normal operations as soon as possible," the IRS said.

People, not person. Plural, not singular. And very, very plural. I do suspect that 7 billion (that's a thousand million) people agree that the specific piece of paper called $$$ has a certain value right now.

Those 7 billion also agree that an ounce of gold has a certain value right now. They could also decide tomorrow that it doesn't. It's just currently more difficult to produce enough gold to do that. Until we find a solid gold megaton asteroid out there and then gold is ISM as well.

Money has no intrinsic value. The worth of money is in what people believe it can be exchanged for. If you flood a market with currency, it will not take long before even the text on the bills claiming that they are "legal tender for all debts, public and private" and the threat of governmental force against those who would refuse the currency are not enough to retain any value.

The USA has an economic advantage from the US dollar being an accepted international trade currency. Foreign currency speculatio

Correct, money has no intrinsic economic value. Just like gold, silver and diamonds. The economic value any of these things have is the value that people, as a whole, give to them.

we usually use them all (money, gold, etc) as place holders for exchange of goods, services or labour.

Note: Gold and silver do have some intrinsic value in electronic circuitry, diamonds as industrial abrasives. However, this value is small compared to their main use is as objects of art, decoration and as place holders of economic value.

Except precious metals are no longer acknowledged as currency. As of 2012, only a small fraction [businessinsider.com] of currency has gold backing. In the US and UK, the amount of currency that is backed by gold is roughly 5% (according to that article, not sure about 2016 values).

That's a great idea. Not surprisingly your plan is shared by other brilliant folks, such as Venezuela's new economy czar Luis Salas. He has pointed out that "inflation does not exist." Specifically, the traditional Western economic model that claims printing money devalues currency is bogus and all price increases are merely the result of the parasitic businesses seeking excessive profits. Therefore government should do as you say and print whatever funds they require while diligently preventing greedy speculators from raising prices.

And it's a good thing, too. Prior do Luis Salas's incredible insights Venezuela's fortunes were looking pretty bleak. Doubtless his printing presses will be able to turn all of that around and the rest of the world will be thrilled to restock PDVAL's shelves in exchange for beautiful new bolivars. Why, only yesterday we learned that Luis is importing newly printed cash [wsj.com] by the planeload to implement this strategy.

So thankfully your thinking has been adopted in the nick of time and saved Venezuela from collapse. Good work.

If the Venezuelan government says a Llama is equal to one Bolivar than a Llama is equal to one Bolivar.

Sure it does. And if that means the one Bolivar Llama is entirely theoretical because all the real Llamas are elsewhere being traded at market prices, then that's just greedy speculators undermining the revolution.

The IRS is certainly an expense, partly because the tax code is extremely complex and partly because the US government is designed with efficiency as a top priority. However, getting rid of taxes and printing money doesn't actually work - it's been tried more than once. Google "hyperinflation" for some examples.

The crux of it is that if the government prints whatever money they need, they end up "needing" trillions of dollars. Even voting on spending on stop it; 51% of people will vote for "free" health care, "free" college education, "free" housing, "free" cell phones, "free" solar companies, etc. If the people don't have to pay for these things fairly directly through taxes, they vote to spend like a drunken Ted Kennedy on amateur night at the strip club.

So the government prints a shit-ton of dollars to pay for all this stuff. The actual value of the dollar, aka prices, is set by supply and demand. Printing more dollars reduces the value of the existing dollars. (The value of each dollar is separate from the government declaring that the official money is called the dollar, aka fiat.) So the value of the dollar falls when the government prints a bunch. The next month, the government needs to pay their bills again. Remember now the value if each dollar is less, so they have to print more in order to pay their bills. Printing more reduces the value of the dollar again, so the next month they have to print even more. In about a year, the dollar becomes basically worthless. At that point people stop using the official currency and switch to another country's currency.

Since the US became a super-power through WWII, several countries with local currency that was hyperinflated by their government printing it switched to the US dollar, specfically because the US dollar is stable. The number printed isn't decided by the government, but by an independent board tasked with keeping the value properly "stable". (Properly stable here means slight inflation because slight inflation reduces unemployment).

That should read:because the US government is NOT designed with efficiency as a top priority.

Bi-cameral legislature isn't efficient, it would be more efficient to have one body. In fact, debate isn't efficient, it would be more efficient to have all the decisions made by Kim Jong Obama. Public hearings certainly aren't efficient. It's not efficient to have courts examine the Constitutionality of federal laws. Obama once taught a course on the Constitution, it would be more efficient to just assume he knows what he's doing and all of his decisions are constitutional. But we've decided that when it comes to the federal government, some things are more important than efficiency.

Government doesn't print money (or even do the digital equivalent). They borrow money from private banks and the Federal Reserve. The personal income tax (which was passed at roughly the same time as the Federal Reserve was established) is merely the federal government's tool for guaranteeing that the bankers will always get their interest payments.

You can't eliminate the Irs even in a flat tax. Doing so means you stop caring whether or not people are being accurate with their tax bills.

99% of the irs job is verifying that the income you report and pay taxes on is equal to the income you actually took in.

In a country without an irs net revuene from taxes would fall to a million dollars after the first year or two. I know I would only claim an income of a few hundred dollars. As I would count everything I spent first.

Why do people give the government an interest free loan? Getting money back from the IRS is wasteful. Let your money work for you during the year (investments) and then pay the government if necessary.

A lot of people simply don't understand how the system works. One of my in-laws convinced her husband to put in 0 withholding allowances (or maybe 1; I forget) for years, ending up with a huge refund. Mind you, they had several children, so it was a relatively immense check. I think she thought somehow this was a hack that got them free money. Meanwhile, he had to borrow money from his own kids sometimes, because his cash flow was so bad.

A lot of people simply don't understand how the system works. One of my in-laws convinced her husband to put in 0 withholding allowances (or maybe 1; I forget) for years, ending up with a huge refund. Mind you, they had several children, so it was a relatively immense check. I think she thought somehow this was a hack that got them free money. Meanwhile, he had to borrow money from his own kids sometimes, because his cash flow was so bad.

Possibly, or it was a hack she used on her husband. It's hard to justify big expenses when you've got a little extra money coming in each month, but if you suddenly get a check for $8k...."honey, lets take that Caribbean cruise I've conveniently been planning since last April (when we 'unexpectedly' got that $8k tax refund and took our European tour)"

I don't disagree with this philosophy. Yes the government is using your money and giving it back without interest. Yes you should be investing that money instead of letting the government keep it all year. But in the real world, having a 'bonus' of money at the beginning of the year, even if it's my money, and even if its money the government should have given to me throughout the year, is something I'm ok with. There are some things that make sense logically that just don't work in the real word, and I

The only way the IRS could 'adjust' withholding properly is when there is a single earner with a single source of income and that income is steady throughout the year. Everything else completely screws up withholding.

The $5 in interest I would have earned by depositing that wealth in a money market account isn't worth the risk of paying too little and being fined. Nor is it worth expending the time and effort required to ensure that I pay the minimum necessary to avoid the penalty.

I do this every year. If you can't pay in full by April 15th you get a very small fine and (thanks to out right wing congress) interest penalties. It's still a fraction of even the best credit card rates and they try hard to work with you. I've had some rough patches due to family illnesses and I'd take the IRS as a creditor over any one else.

Because one of the top triggers for an audit is underpayment of taxes. I try to break even, but shade towards a small refund. Been through the grist mill once with the IRS, never, ever want to do it again.

Well considering that I seem to only be able to get my total additional yearly tax bill to +-$1500 each year it is pretty difficult. I don't like the loan but when you have variable income sources that come in as 1099-MISC from prize winnings, my wife quilts and some years she does well at shows and other years not so much. Between some years the swing in income is almost $10,000 so it is kind of hard to deal with that other than put some of the winnings aside to cover the taxes.

Why do people feel the need to whine about other people giving the government a free loan? Most of us don't really give two sh*ts about it and I have more things to do with my time over the year than worry about whether or not the Feds get a 0% from me.

So they get a 0% from me.. WGAS. You know what is nice? That nice little bonus to me, from me, in March each year.

Most people don't whine about other people giving the government an interest-free loan. Most people who whine do so because the government gets any interest on any tax they overpaid. We also make fun of people who think that a tax refund is a bonus or free money. Shoot, my state taxes tax refunds as income!

Your state does not tax refunds as income. What happens is that your state taxes assume as a starting point that your federal taxes are as stated on your W2, and your state AGI is reduced by that amount. However, if you overpaid your federal taxes, some of that money is coming back to you and was not really taxes paid. That money (your refund) should have been taxed by the state, but wasn't, so it gets added in as income. Likewise, if you underpaid your federal taxes you can claim the underpayment as ad

The IRS is an evil entity spawned by crooks who only want to pay off their lobbyist cohorts for political payola and apply pork barrel pandering to their constituents. Even worse, it seems to be managed by those who have no idea how to set up a computer system. Instead of a complex tax code and an IRS, set a percentage of a wage and make everyone pay. That's the only fair way to do it. Those who make more will pay more.

Then the IRS gets to estimate the value of the housing expense you're given by your corporation, the value of your transportation you're provided by your corporation, and so on. Income isn't just monetary funds; it's any compensation applied for working. So if you live in corporate housing, and have a corporately-owned car - that's compensation that will be taxed.

It's easy until you want to take money out. Then that money counts as your "wage" and you'd have to pay the going rate on it.

Why would I ever take the money out? I'll just gin up bullshit business expenses. I mean, I'll make the trip about business by doing one business-related thing, like everyone else does. It's not evasion, it's avoidance. Whee!

set a percentage of a wage and make everyone pay. That's the only fair way to do it. Those who make more will pay more.

A percentage on wage is grossly unfair, as all those executives and CXO's who get paid a salary of $1 but get millions worth of stock options would literally pay pennies in taxes. The only fair way would be a percentage of all income:wages, capital gains, disbursements from foundations/non-profits/corporations, etc.

You're someone who never cashed in options, are you? When you have the options - they have potential value, but no real value until exercised. Then you get to pay income tax on the realized gains of those options (because they are realized in less than 1 year time - you typically exercise and sell on the same day, or at least within a week).

Now, you CAN take out loans against the value of your options, if the options are for publicly traded stocks. But then you're essentially mortgaging your future for p

No, stock options are almost always taxed as ordinary income. The basis of a stock option is not set until you exercise the option. With a stock option, you own NOTHING. It is simply a promise by the company to sell you stock at some future date at a fixed price - there is no value to you in that promise, until you exercise the option.

When you exercise the option, you then establish a cost basis of an actual item of value (the stock). Since few people have the money to actually buy their stock outrigh

I think that no matter if you sell the stock or not, the difference between the stock price (when you exercise the option) and the option strike price is always ordinary income.

A lot of people seem very confused about options, but they aren't that difficult. Let's say you have been granted options for your stock at $100. On the day you exercise your option the price of the stock is $120. You pay $100 for the stock, and have $20 of ordinary income. The cost basis for the stock is now $120. If you later

I think that no matter if you sell the stock or not, the difference between the stock price (when you exercise the option) and the option strike price is always ordinary income.

A lot of people seem very confused about options, but they aren't that difficult. Let's say you have been granted options for your stock at $100. On the day you exercise your option the price of the stock is $120. You pay $100 for the stock, and have $20 of ordinary income. The cost basis for the stock is now $120. If you later sell the stock for $200 you have $80 of capital gains (long-term or short term, depending on how long you hold it).

Correct. You either pay full income tax on the whole thing, OR you hold the stock and sell it later and pay capital gains tax on the accrued value after your got the stock. Bottom line is you always pay at least some income tax, and usually (because few people actually buy and hold the stock) pay income tax on the whole thing, and never get to leverage any appreciation in value as a capital gains tax rate.

I work on a team that writes billing and invoicing software for my company. I can tell you with first hand experience that accountants have no fucking clue how a computer works, other than what they can do in Excel. Because of this, they want to do EVERYTHING in Excel whether it's even remotely the right tool or not.

Example: someone wants to export the general ledger from the billing system to an Excel spreadsheet, and doesn't understand why a two million row data set might be a problem for Excel.

These issues are exactly why "Business Intelligence" tools exist - to provide Excel-ish functions, backed by a real database. But they don't want to hear that, because it means that Excel might actually have limits, and they would have to learn a new tool.

Getting closer to TFA, I'm sure that somewhere in the IRS they have honest-to-goodness network engineers who set this shit up, or at least contractors that they paid to do it. Hardware failures happen in any data center, and you try to mitigate with redundancy and automatic fail-over. But it's never perfect, there's always something that gets missed, or something that doesn't work exactly as expected.

Totally! If we just elect Bernie then problems like these will be a thing of the past.

Instead of worrying about filing taxes 100% of income goes right to the Feds and every year you can apply to the Federal Government for a welfare package that will be given out based on politically correct preferences regarding race (no whities), gender (no Benjamins for Benjamin unless Benjamin was born Bethany), language & lack of citizenship (Habla Ingles? No Dinero!), and of course, whether or not you used a substantial portion of last year's welfare check to pay off Union "community organizers" Vido & Guido who run Bernie's local chapter of the Revolutionary Guard.

All you need to do is fill out a trivially simple 200 page form in triplicate, get it notarized by an official government agent, send it via certified mail and wait 18 - 24 months. Take that corporations!

Ronald Reagan once said in support of lower top tax rates that the old 91% rates from the 50s were pointless and counterproductive, because people would work for 3 months, then when they hit that rate, just stop working for the rest of the year (or work overseas or for cash) because no one was going to labor only to keep just 9% of their income.

What you fail to take into account with the 91% tax rate is that it was a marginal rate. It only applied to income over a certain amount. I'll use $1,000,000 for the sake of argument. So if the 91% rate applies to income over $1 M all of your income up to that point is taxed at the lower rate that people not making that much pay. And even if you reach the point where you're paying 91% taxes on income over $1 M you'll still make more money than if you purposely hold your income under $1 M. Now I'm not a

Yes, I'm aware that practically no one paid that rate and there were a lot of loopholes, then Kennedy lowered the tax rate to 75% and closed a bunch of loopholes. My main point is that high taxes by themselves don't necessarily kill the economy.

You are aware that nobody actually paid that 91% marginal tax rate, right? I mean that literally. Not. One. Person. Nobody paid that marginal tax rate - there were plenty of loopholes and far less manpower to find those exploiting them.

Yes, because people WILL NOT PAY such a rate...

People complain that Warren Buffet pays half the effective tax rate as his minions... that is BECAUSE he is taxed at such a high marginal rate...

Yes, I'm aware that practically no one paid that rate and there were a lot of loopholes, then Kennedy lowered the tax rate to 75% and closed a bunch of loopholes. My main point is that high taxes by themselves don't necessarily kill the economy.

Yea, but people think that "tax the rich" will solve all our money problems too...

It won't, it never raises as much actual money as you think... people change their behavior to avoid the taxes.

What you fail to take into account with the 91% tax rate is that it was a marginal rate. It only applied to income over a certain amount. I'll use $1,000,000 for the sake of argument. So if the 91% rate applies to income over $1 M all of your income up to that point is taxed at the lower rate that people not making that much pay.

I don't fail to take anything into account... What YOU fail to understand is that once you hit that $1,000,000 number, you might as well sit home and watch Oprah...

Sure, the tax rate "isn't so bad" on the first $1,000,000, but on the second $1,000,000 you only get to keep $91,000.

That is stupid, you're done for the year, there is no point to working to make another million when you keep less than 10% of it.

Now I'm not advocating for a 91% tax rate but I don't think something like a 50% tax rate on income over $10 million is crazy to contemplate.

You can do that all you like, but it would be ineffective. 50% is high enough that people will find

So if my yearly income was $10 million but I decided to stop working after the first million I'd be foregoing $810,000 in income after taxes. I guess if you're that rich already it's not that big a deal. But as I said I don't support a 91% tax rate but if the rate was 50% you'd be foregoing $4,500,000 in income in my example. Do you really think that's such a disincentive that people would quite working?

So if my yearly income was $10 million but I decided to stop working after the first million I'd be foregoing $810,000 in income after taxes. I guess if you're that rich already it's not that big a deal. But as I said I don't support a 91% tax rate but if the rate was 50% you'd be foregoing $4,500,000 in income in my example. Do you really think that's such a disincentive that people would quite working?

Quit working?

No. Quit working in such a way as to pay that tax rate? Yes.

Many people in the 50s simply worked overseas to avoid it.

No one making $10 million is going pay $4.5 million if they have any brains, and most do.

A 50% tax rate won't get paid any more than the current 35% corporate tax rate gets paid.

Well if after $1,000,000 you'd be handing most of it over to Uncle Sam that probably encouraged business owners to instead reinvest into the company more than taking profits for themselves while looking for more ways to cut costs and shaft the employees.

Yea, because it is only "greedy" business owners that could make that kind of money.

Lord, our education system has failed, I read the replies and it just... is sad...

Well if after $1,000,000 you'd be handing most of it over to Uncle Sam that probably encouraged business owners to instead reinvest into the company more than taking profits for themselves while looking for more ways to cut costs and shaft the employees.

You are absolutely correct. The higher tax rates were a great incentive for companies to invest in CAPEX and actual tangible growth. The company could avoid taxes by spending money on infrastructure and workers that would increase share value by creating g

Reagan was lying by omission. He did that lots. It was a technique invented by Karl Rove then implemented and perfected by Reagan. He neglected to mention that 91% tax rate didn't kick in until the 2016 equivalent of $20 million dollars and only applied to income _over_ that amount. Hell for your first $200k you paid the same rate as I do, and I don't make squat. Someone who cleared $30 mil would still make $990,000 a year more that year. This is what marginal tax rates are. They're to prevent run away inco

If you deal with kids you might have found one that has an unhealthy obsession. It could be reading, video games, fighting, watching tv, pokemon cards, whatever... You eventually have to step in and say you can only do this activity for this much time and you need to find something else to do with the rest of your time.

The 91% tax rate functions much like this. It says, "Dude, your just running up the scoreboard. There's more to life." Some people just never mature enough on their own.

Too bad that you're doing the same, by saying nothing other than that.

Reagan's point was completely correct. No on is going to give 91% of their income to the government. Either they'll find tax deductions or other options to avoid it, or they'll go somewhere else, or they'll just not work.

He was correct, such a tax rate is stupid, it doesn't get paid, having it is a lie.

You keep defending the current tax code, yet it is that code that allows Warren Buffet to pay half the effective tax rate of his staff.

How do I *keep* defending the current tax code? This is the first comment I have made on this story.

Fair enough, I don't always pay much attention to the names on comments, and your response was similar to many others.

Do you know why Buffet pays less than his staff? Because of people like Reagan and you who take marginal tax rates to mean absolute tax rates.

No, Buffet pays less than his staff because the tax code is written to favor him and not his staff.

When you talk about a marginal tax rate of 91%, it doesn't mean you are giving 91 percent of your total income to the government. It means you are giving 91% of your income *over a certain amount* to the government.

I think everyone here understands that, but it still isn't true, because most of Buffet's income falls into the top tax rate, and he STILL doesn't pay it. He makes enough that his total income over the top rate is the vast majority of his income.

If we were to follow your logic, a person making a million dollars would end up paying $910,000 in taxes

Yes, I've been poor, I've been paycheck to paycheck... it sucks, no doubt about it...

Never again, but I worked my butt off to make that happen...

$20K +$3K = $23K

You said that 20% was too high for someone making $30K, which is $6K. So cut their tax rate to 10%, that reduces their taxes to $3K, but the other $3K has to come from somewhere, so "the rich", right? That would be me by that logic.

So raising my taxes to $23K *ONLY* raises my tax rate by 3%, but it cuts the poor's tax rate in HALF!

>Probably has more to do with international trade being halted since December

You know international trade is not halted, yet you said it anyway. That makes you a liar.

LOLZ, as of this moment there is less than 10 cargo ships operating on the entire planet, the rest are moored. You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences, and they are already here. How about them train profits last month huh? No biggy on those 100 wally worlds shut down this week either huh? Your lack of perception does not make me a liar, just makes you fit right in on the bus load of retards.

>Probably has more to do with international trade being halted since December

You know international trade is not halted, yet you said it anyway. That makes you a liar.

LOLZ, as of this moment there is less than 10 cargo ships operating on the entire planet, the rest are moored. You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences, and they are already here. How about them train profits last month huh? No biggy on those 100 wally worlds shut down this week either huh? Your lack of perception does not make me a liar, just makes you fit right in on the bus load of retards.

>Probably has more to do with international trade being halted since December

You know international trade is not halted, yet you said it anyway. That makes you a liar.

LOLZ, as of this moment there is less than 10 cargo ships operating on the entire planet, the rest are moored. You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences, and they are already here. How about them train profits last month huh? No biggy on those 100 wally worlds shut down this week either huh? Your lack of perception does not make me a liar, just makes you fit right in on the bus load of retards.

Read the Snopes article to which I linked which explains how that website only shows coastal traffic and so it doesn't give any information on shipping out at sea.

Our family business has been importing goods from Europe without interruption. We had a shipment arrive from Ireland yesterday. You are not showing good judgement in what and who you believe.

I take into account a lot of factors and read between the lines as we all know that media sources are doing a lot of BS'ing, profit loss in the train based shipping industry over the last month does appear to support cargo shipping has a serious problem that ultimately reflects on health of the world economy and there have been interviews with people in that industry that capitulate truth to the fact international shipping has fallen just short of halted as they would have to operate at a loss, oil industry has also taken notice and stopped gouging as much but at $20 a barrel the cost of fuel should be lower than it is, Wal-Marts in the hundreds closing is not a good sign at all either. Federal reserve closure of the NYC location and moved over to Chicago could likely be to cut costs to continue to present the illusion of a healthy economy by buying up stock when the NYSE/NASDAC starts to tank. Doctored figures on the actual unemployment rates. Pretty sure by the looks of the over all picture will be shown in the trucking industry next. Being that there is federal law that dictates the money in your account that is in the bank belongs to them in the event of a financial meltdown of the banking industry (again), the money belongs to the bank. Based upon what we saw in Greece, knowing there really isn't anywhere for the federal reserve system to kick the can this time, I myself would not trust the banks with the money. Sure, even the president stated that those who have stated the economy is in bad shape are full of it, but how often have you seen the government be honest about pretty much any situation days. There is too much real data to reference publicly available to support that the president is one that is full of it. It is also understood that it is an election year and the economy does experience an element of uncertainty during this process but this appears to be a bit more than just an element.